1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to water coolers and, more particularly, to water coolers that provide hot water, cold water and icemaking capabilities.
2. Description of Related Art
Prior art bottled water coolers have long provided a convenient source of fresh purified water to offices, work sites and homes. Their usefulness is limited, however, at sites in which a refrigerator is not available. In such cases, users will not have access to cold water or ice. This disadvantage is especially felt in hot areas and at work sites where significant physical work is involved.
The bottled water station described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,019,004 seeks to overcome the above disadvantages. This patent provides a system that includes hot, cold and room temperature water outlets. A removable water bottle operates in conjunction with an interior reservoir which is divided by an orificed baffle plate. The plate separates an upper room temperature chamber from a chilled cold-water lower chamber. The water station further includes a hot water tank having a heater band wrapped around its circumference.
A major problem with the above system is that the baffle creates a highly inefficient separation between warm water and cold water. Convention currents passing through the baffle orifices will diminish the temperature gradient between the two waters. Also, the hot water heater supply pipe passes through the cold water zone. This creates significant thermal inefficiency. Additionally, the thin baffle plate provides an exceptionally poor insulative means for thermal separation between the ambient and cold chambers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,405,052 provides an improvement over the above system wherein the water reservoir and icemaker are both contained in a freezing chamber. This system may freeze the water in the reservoir. Also, the arrangement is inefficient because the freezing chamber comprises the entire interior of the cabinet. As such, all of the cabinet must be heavily insulated. Additionally, the freezing means must have a significant capacity for maintaining the large interior at a temperature below freezing.
Still further, to inhibit the reservoir water from freezing solid, the reservoir must be heavily insulated. This redundancy is costly.
In an alternative embodiment, the patent discloses a cabinet divided into a cooling compartment and a freezer compartment. The compartments are separated by an insulated wall. However, this system requires separate thermostats and refrigerating means to maintain an above-freezing temperature in one compartment and a below freezing temperature in another. Clearly, this requires extraordinary refrigerating assemblies, unnecessary control systems and significant interior and exterior insulative wall structures.